Life, Times and Work of William Gillies, 1898-1973

Andrew McPherson is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. He has been researching the life, times and works of William Gillies for over twenty years. He is the author of (with Raab) Governing Education, Edinburgh University Press, 1988, and William Gillies: Modernism and Nation in British Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).

Gillies is re-positioned within debates about modern British art and national identity to revelatory effect.

• Select Abbreviations ForewordNote on the Dates and Titles of ImagesPrefacePurpose The two booksMethodOrganisationThe List of WorksFirst Acknowledgements Preview 1 Introduction Introduction: ‘something ... generative was happening’ Modernity, modernism and the countryman fiction Patronage, cultural politics, mentors, intuition and chance　 Haddington and Edinburgh reconsidered ‘Leading artists and sculptors of the modern school’: Gillies in context Methods, sources and organisation 　2 Origins and Childhoood Introduction: perspectives on family and change Town, city, asylum: the family diaspora, 1860-1910 The educational ladder Primary-school friendships, 1903-10 Secondary-school Dux, 1910-16 Conclusion 3 Childhood Sensibility Preview Eclectic memories Learning to picture: childhood mentors, 1910-16 Seventy-one pictures: the visual evidence The emergent sensibility 　4 The Afterlife of War Introduction: the silence of the survivor Haldane and Haddington, 1905-16: test-bed for a modern army 　To the trenches and back, 1917-19 Infantry private and artist: preview of a future self Fiction and experience: the existential legacy Back to college, 1919-23 Time bent back: the legacy extended 5 The Family Economy Preview Supported by sisters: the family pact, 1920-29 Edinburgh years: retrenchment, insecurity and loss, 1930-39 The flight to Temple village in 1939 Promotion, security, and selling-up in Edinburgh, 1946-48 6 Kailyard and Kin Modernism or sentimentality? J M Barrie, MacDiarmid and Kirriemuir ‘a spot where pilgrimages are made’: the family-origins storyDivergent family values: recasting past and futureLived modernity: scepticism, mutuality, science and gender‘grown silent’: when experience controverts narrative7 Bohemian Edinburgh Introduction: public images, private lives The Society of Eight and dead men’s shoes Munch, decadence, scandal and Herbert Read Cultured circles: gilded, Catholic, nationalist, gay Frustrated love in Oslo, Edinburgh and the French Riviera An audience schooled in modernist sophistications 　8 Emma, Janet and Margery Introduction: aspects of thyroid disease Emma Smith Gillies: potter, feminist, casualty Living and dying with misdiagnoses ‘Sweet on Gillies’: the artist and Margery Porter 9 Portraits Introduction: ‘to whisper rather than to state’ The 1920s: keeping his hand in The 1930s: sacred and profane, playful and confessional Artist and mirror: facing present, future and past 10 Landscapes and Still Lifes, 1925-39 Overview: ‘a charter of liberty’ Cubism in Paris, Edinburgh and London Shaken by Munch: the disintegrated landscape The emergent idiom: perception, abstraction and Klee ‘The tree in the field’: perception, introspection and imaging Beyond mere appearance: still life and existential crisis 11 Later Still Lifes Introduction and overview: abstraction and the ‘curious gap’ Hundreds of still lifes: trends, 1925-73 　 　 　 　 　 　 Wartime: ‘just what the times demand’ The 1955 RSA Diploma painting Life and death in abstraction, 1947-60 Inner and outer worlds: in pursuit of a unity, 1960-72　 　 　 　 　 　 　 12 Later Landscapes in Oil Introduction: Temple continuities, 1940-49 Dispersed forms of imagination: the Borders, 1949-60 Visual summations, 1960-72 13 Politics, Patronage and Later Landscapes on Paper Introduction: ‘a curious exaltation’ 　 The works on paper, 1940-72 The Edinburgh Festival, nationalism, and the countryman fiction The countryman and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Conclusions Timeline All Abbreviations Notes to Chapters Details of Illustrations List of Works Select BibliographyIndicative Primary Sources References PermissionsImage Credits 　 　 AcknowledgementsIndex of Gillies Artworks General Index